3 Tips On Researching Online Before You Buy

The virtual world is now your oyster – even if you want to buy oysters. Almost any item or product that you may be thinking of buying is now only ever one or two mouse clicks away. For many, an afternoon spent browsing online has taken the place of a casual few hours roaming around the nearest shopping centre, plus you get to sidestep the crowds and you don't have to listen to your partner and/or kids moaning that they're bored and they're missing the footie. Be wary though - you need to keep yourself secure whilst you're shopping online, and you need to know that any deal you're offered is as good as it seems to be. Here are three tips on how to research online before you take the purchasing plunge.

Read The Reviews

Before the internet, to know if a movie was any good you had to either listen to Barry Norman or check that Eddie Murphy wasn't in it (we'll let him off for Trading Places and Beverley Hills Cop). These days, when you log on to the internet, reviews spring up on Google as soon as you enter the movie's name into the search engine. Almost everything is reviewed on the internet now, from chewing gum to Japanese motor cycles. If you're thinking of making a purchase, there are plenty of brilliant review sites to be found over the web. One great one is InfoProductReview – I was thinking of buying my wife some earrings for her birthday so I read their review on QP Jewellers before I prised open my wallet. 

Be Serious About Being Safe 

When you're buying a product over the internet, it's just as much about knowing who you're buying it from, as it is to what you're actually buying. While you may read positive reviews about a certain retailer, some unscrupulous retailers pay people to write fake reviews. If you're thinking about making an online purchase, you're going to want to make sure you're dealing with a secure web- site. There are two main ways of doing this – in the address bar of your browser the URL of the site should begin https:// and not just http://. Also, a retail site should display a closed padlock symbol to the left of the URL – if an open padlock is displayed, the site is not secure. 

Don't Be Scammed

There's an old adage – if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. If you find a deal offering iPads for £9.99, you can be sure it's not legitimate. If, however, you find something that might be a scam but you're not sure, just type the name of the site and/or product into a search engine followed by the word 'scam'. If someone has been scammed, they're likely to want to warn the world. You can also check dedicated scam-prevention sites such as scamadviser. 

Making online purchases needn't be taxing – just do your research and keep yourself safe, and those bargain purchases will soon be dropping through your letterbox.

*This is a sponsored post.

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